JOBCENTRE phone lines were today branded a "farce" by a Birmingham man who has been left hanging on for weeks over a claim.

JOBCENTRE phone lines were today branded a "farce" by a Birmingham man who has been left hanging on for weeks over a claim.

Andrew Ellis, of Penns Lane, Sutton Coldfield, signed on in July after being made redundant from his IT job.

The 46-year-old, who is out of work for the first time, was this week still waiting for ten weeks' money after struggling to get through to the processing centre.

He said: "I have tried to phone time after time after time. My call is in a queue then cut off, I've been put through to a fax machine. I once spoke to someone but it was the wrong department and they couldn't connect me. The whole thing is a farce."

Mr Ellis eventually went to speak to staff at Sutton Coldfield Jobcentre and was shocked by what he discovered.

"They said the processing centre had barred the Jobcentre's calls and all they could do was send an email on my behalf.

"It was getting desperate as my landlord is quite rightly demanding his back rent," he added.

Following inquiries from the Birmingham Mail, Mr Ellis has now been paid the outstanding money.

Today the Department of Works and Pensions admitted there are call centre problems and apologised for any inconvenience to Mr Ellis and other customers.

The spokeswoman said: "Our call centres have a new system which has unfortunately had real problems with callers experiencing difficulty getting through to contact centres.

"We acknowledge this problem and have put more staff into our contact centres, made more telephones available and introduced better technology to address it."

She said that Jobcentre Plus, which pays £100 million in benefits each day, is making steady improvement.

"Things are improving, and continue to do so. Last week nearly 90 per cent of calls were answered, with the vast majority of customers receiving follow-up calls within two days," she added.